Court backs council's unanimous decision to deny license renewal

PLAINFIELD - A state appellate court has upheld the city's denial of a liquor store on a street corner that police said is one of Plainfield's worst hotbed of crimes.

The city council's unanimous vote not to renew the liquor license of Clinton's Deli and Grocery/Arlington Liquors came in 2013 after police responded to 136 calls in 13 months at the West Front Street location near Clinton Avenue.

Those calls included one shooting, 11 incidents involving narcotics and various instances of loitering and drug transactions.

The store, owned by Naicken Inc., contains a liquor store, deli and a chicken restaurant within 500 feet of a park and 1,000 feet of a school.

The denial of the license came three years after the city council, after hearing complaints from residents, renewed the license with special conditions.

Those conditions included having two armed security guards from dusk until 2 a.m., installing between six and 10 security cameras and collaborating with police in reporting any illegal or suspicious activity.

But the turning point came in August 2012, when Vadrajan Naicken, the store owner, received a state Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) violation when he sold alcohol to a person under 21.

The store received further violations in 2013, when a deli employee was arrested inside the store on a charge of possessing drugs with intent to distribute.

The employee, who had suffered a stroke and was taking pain medication, told authorities she was selling her pain pills so she could buy more pain medication for herself.

A restraining order was filed against her to prevent her from returning to the store, but she returned and was arrested again. When a search found a single pain pill on her, she faced more drug charges.

In testimony before an administrative law judge, Plainfield officers recounted a number of drug-related arrests in the area of the store.

An administrative law judge ruled that the store had violated all three conditions of the liquor license renewal and that the city council had not "abused its discretion" by denying the license renewal.

The ABC agreed with the judge.

In its appeal, Naicken said the ABC made factual determinations unsupported by the record.

But the appellate court agreed with the judge and the ABC, saying that their decisions were "supported by sufficient credible evidence as a whole."